The Jewish population of America has dropped slightly over the last decade, marking its first decline since the Colonial period of American history, a major national study reports. Researchers for the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01, released this week by United Jewish Communities, say the survey is "a mixed bag" for the Jewish community that points to both challenges and strengths for the coming years. "We see some tremendous strengths in the Jewish...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - One out of five Americans who consider themselves culturally or ethnically Jewish say they do not believe in God or they do not follow any particular faith, in a sign of the changing nature of American Jewish identity, according to a study released on Tuesday. The Pew Research Center survey found vast differences among generations - with 93 percent of Jewish Americans born between 1914 and 1927 saying they identified as religiously...

By Stevenson Swanson, Tribune national correspondent | August 24, 2003

A century after this city's Jewish population thronged the airless streets of the Lower East Side, America's largest Jewish community is returning to its past. In recent decades, many of the descendants of the desperately poor immigrants who once made that Manhattan neighborhood the densest concentration of humanity in America have become one of the most successful segments of America's ethnic alloy, becoming ensconced in the ranks of the middle and upper classes. But a new...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A new novel about a neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Germany's first Jewish candidate for Chancellor has shed a timely light on the right-wing extremist violence that has plagued the country since 1990 and was swept under the carpet for years. Political thriller "The Jewish Candidate" by British journalist David Crossland has been published just as Germany's September election campaign is heating up and at the start of a trial of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a...

The U.S. Jewish population was estimated last year to be 5.8 million people and appeared to be shifting, like the rest of the population, to the South and West from the Snow Belt and Rust Belt. But countering the general population redistribution trend, two locales-the Chicago area and the Cherry Hill-Southern New Jersey area both reported Jewish population gains of more than 10,000 people in 1992. The figures are contained in the new edition of the American Jewish Yearbook, published by...

* Austria marks anniversary of Nazi "Anschluss" on Tuesday * Jewish population now 15,000 compared to 195,000 in 1938 * Jewish community growing in confidence but vigilant * Far-right Freedom party polling 20 pct before elections * Austria airbrushed Nazi history for decades By Georgina Prodhan VIENNA, March 10 (Reuters) - Marina Plistiev, a Kyrgyzstan-born Jew, has lived in Vienna for 34 years but still doesn't like to take public...

A Torah rescued from Lithuania has a home on the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. The carrier is one of the few Navy vessels with its own Torah. Few ships are large enough to need one, said Sam Werbel, an organizer of a dedication ceremony attended by a crowd of 500, including some Holocaust survivors. "This is not a ceremony alone," said Mark E. Talisman, founder and president of the Project Judaica Foundation. "It's about humanity or a lack thereof. It's about all of us...

(Reuters) - People with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest global group in a new study of the size of the world's faiths, placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus. The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010, also showed Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand in the future while Jews have the weakest growth prospects. It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present in all regions of...

As dusk fell on Sunday, three Jewish families gathered in a Buffalo Grove home to mark the start of Rosh Hashanah. For six years, the families and their young children have met at the home of Neil and Mira Zweiban to celebrate the Jewish New Year, which began at sundown Sunday, with a traditional meal. The table, set for a dozen, is laden with egg bread; "the round challah symbolizes another year of life," said Mira Zweiban, 35. There is honey cake, too, and apple slices surrounding a glass jar of...

"Jewish London: A Comprehensive Guidebook for Visitors and Londoners" Interlink, $17.95 London has had a strong Jewish presence since the 11th century. In this evocative and richly illustrated guide to Jewish London, authors Rachel Kolsky and Roslyn Rawson offer a fascinating look at Jewish London today. The Jewish population hovers around 196,000; by contrast, the Jewish population of the entire United Kingdom is slightly less than 300,000. Whether visiting the bagel and falafel bars of...

Rashid Khalidi's letter (Voice, March 6) misleads your readers with a selective presentation of the facts in regard to anticipated building of housing by the Israeli government on an unpopulated location between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, known as Har Homa. - No homeowners, Arab or Jewish, will be displaced by this project, since the land is vacant, mostly forested. - Of the 1,850 dunams (about 460 acres) involved, 1,400 dunams come from Jewish owners and 450 from Arabs. All are offered full compensation.

A lifelong Chicagoan, Alex Infante faced a big decision two years ago. He and his wife, Jackie, already had one toddler, plus intentions to have another baby, so his family would be outgrowing their Andersonville condo. But where should they buy their first house? Because both adults worked in the suburbs -- Jackie in Evanston, Alex in Glenview -- they initially considered Evanston. Then another location came up for consideration, a geographical midpoint between their commutes:...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised nearly 800 additional homes for Jews in the West Bank to appease political allies, a television station reported Tuesday. Netanyahu agreed to build 780 houses in two ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlements after religious leaders of the United Torah Judaism Party threatened to pull their party out of his coalition government, Channel Two television said. In a meeting Sunday with Deputy Housing Minister Meir Porush of the UTJ Party, Netanyahu...

Mike Royko's basis for choosing Miami's football team over San Francisco's in a recent Tribune was amusing even in its reference to the gay population of San Francisco. However, if he had wished an earthquake on Miami because of its Jewish population, instead of San Francisco for its gay population, the Nazilike sentiment of the remark might have been more apparent to him. In fact, as Abba Eban recently pointed out on television, gay men were interred with Jews in the Nazi concentration camps in an...

Jaap Penraat, an architect and industrial designer who saved 406 Jews in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands by forging false documents and taking them to safety, has died in Catskill, N.Y. He was 88. He died June 25 of esophageal cancer, according to his daughter Noelle. Mr. Penraat refused for many years to talk about his wartime experiences. When he finally did, he simply said he had done the decent thing. "You do these things because in your mind, there is no other way of doing it," he said in an interview...

A statistical survey showing the Jewish population has dwindled over the last decade has unleashed a debate among American Jews that touches on the community's determination to preserve its identity and place in American politics. The study found the country's Jewish population had dropped over the last decade to 5.2 million from 5.5 million, but some Jewish demographers said the real number could be significantly higher. The dispute has spilled into the public arena with denunciations and...